Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) is effective in the Parkinsonian state, while it seems to produce rather non-selective stimulation over an unknown volume of tissue. Despite a huge amount of anatomical and physiological data regarding the structure of the basal ganglia (BG) and their connections, the computational processes performed by the basal ganglia in health and disease still remain unclear. Its hypothesized roles are discussed in this chapter as well as the changes that are observed under pathophysiological conditions.
Several hypotheses exist in explaining the mechanism by which DBS provides its beneficial effects. Computational models of the BG span a range of structural levels, from low-level membrane conductance-based models of single neurons to high level system models of the complete BG circuit. A selection of models is presented in this
chapter. This chapter aims at explaining how models of neurons and connected brain nuclei contribute to the understanding of DBS.